


Interim: Mink

by Harukami



Series: Interim [2]
Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Gen, M/M, no rape/noncon but references to such
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 18:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The time after Mink leaves and before Aoba finds him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interim: Mink

Mink walks like he's peeling layers off himself. Not literally -- though in some ways it has been literal. The first thing he'd done before catching his flight home was to finally saw off his manacles, cut the heavy, choking collar from his throat. It had been a strange feeling when they hit the ground; a sense that his time as a prisoner was finally over. It hadn't been over when he'd escaped from prison; the life he lived after was, too, a type of prison he'd had yet to escape from. With those gone, he'd bought himself new clothes as well; everything about his look had been designed to present a specific image, intimidation and power. It had served him well when keeping bare control in a prison gang, but that was then. This is now. 

It feels good to be wearing other things again. Denim and flannel. He has a coat in his bag; it's usually cold and damp in Midorijima and he's used to that, but he remembers the temperature back home.

He'd intended to leave Tori behind. It is a machine he'd bought entirely to make things convenient -- and to see if he could use it as any kind of backdoor into Toue's networks. He doesn't need that sort of thing any more; back home, while of course it will still be useful... he isn't going to live the same lifestyle he has been. Besides, allmates aren't as popular back there yet, and finding places to get parts for upkeep will be a nuisance. But in the end, he takes Tori anyway. Not for any specific reason, but it feels rude to just abandon the chip without a housing, so he purchases Tori another identical body. Then, once he puts the chip in, Tori lands on his shoulder. He doesn't get around to telling Tori he's leaving without him, and Tori stays on his shoulder as he gets ready, so he takes him home.

_Home._

Mink feels it when he gets off the plane, even though it's still quite a ways from where he belongs. He rents a car in the city, drives it for eight hours north, returns it to a branch of the agency in the nearest city, and starts walking.

Eventually, he finds the cabin, enters, takes the wood he's gathered along the way and puts it in the fireplace. It's empty where there should be sound, and the small town that should have been occupied is still charcoal and debris, but it's the place he belongs. Tori flies to the back of a chair without comment and watches him as he stares at the fire.

He gets the water heater working and goes to bed.

It's hard to sleep at first. It's dark and the lack of sound is agonizing, but even if there aren't the sounds of other people, there are other sounds that bring forward memories like pus from a wound. The wind through the trees, by itself, is enough that he feels tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. He never intended to hear this sound again. It's thanks to Aoba that he can, but it feels purposeless. 

_Why am I here?_

(He thinks of the things his hands can do, and the things his hands have done, and he thinks about Aoba, and he thinks about squeezing his own pain and loss and anger in vicious, deliberate choice, onto another person. He thinks about the corruption of desire and he thinks about the corruption of hope and he thinks about the corruption of a sense of self and he thinks of the desire to convert a person into nothing but a tool of death and he wonders if he was ever able to do anything, be anything, but that self again. If now that he's alive again he can be something else, do something with his life other than try to make others like himself at the cost of his, and their, humanity. But he doesn't pity himself. He doesn't deserve pity and he feels no regret for that. It's Aoba who was the victim of his choices, and he will not misdirect that onto himself. It is quiet, and there is wind in the trees, and he is living with the things he has done.)

The next day, he has hot water, so he works on removing his dreadlocks. They had been a deliberate choice, of course; both for the intimidation value, and because his hair would wind around itself in its natural wave if not given a careful regime of brushing and occasional braids. Not something he had the opportunity for recently, so better to work with the understanding of his own body; he had time, at least, to wash and roll. But that stage of his life is done, and cutting his hair is unacceptable, and, besides, he has a lot to think about. So he soaks, and conditions, and picks at it carefully, leaning back on his sofa and watching the fire and listening to the sounds outside that he hasn't heard for so long and letting his mind wander around the idea of living, wander around the idea of an indefinite lifespan with no set goal, no purpose to it, and carrying forward the damage he has done instead of dumping it all, leaving it behind with his wrecked flesh.

It takes him nearly eighteen hours and it's quite dark and late when he's done, but eventually he can run his fingers through his hair and not feel snags. He gets up, stretching a body that feels like it's creaking with effort, and goes to wash again, leaves conditioner in for a while in something like an apology to his hair for the rough treatment it just went with the metal brush, and eventually washes that out again. He's exhausted by the time it's done, gazing at the silhouette of his face become unfamiliar. The red ends are still there -- dyed before they were attacked, and not cut since -- and he slowly reaches up to tie a braid over one ear just to feel his hair slide between his fingers with a texture it hasn't had for years.

And then it's late, and he's tired, and he wraps a towel around his head and sleeps again. 

(This time he dreams of the prison, a place built to torture and experiment; Toue needed a place to test his victims where they would neither be discovered nor missed. There was screaming and madness there; he thinks more than there must be in other prisons, though he can't say for sure, as he'd committed no crimes before he went to prison and committed many after. You do what you have to to establish yourself as someone nobody will fuck with, or you get fucked with. He experienced the latter before realizing the former. He remembers in his dream, too, the moment he stepped outside: he still believed, himself, that he would die, but thought it was likely an implanted suggestion. His heart beating fast, he'd moved regardless, because if it was just a suggestion, he would live, and if it was real, if he could never leave this place again and would be Toue's lab rat for the rest of his life, he would be better off dead.)

So he spends days like that, and eventually heads back to town because he wants proper groceries, not just what he can hunt, and he uses up some of his remaining savings. He sees a store there selling native crafts and he hesitates; he's always felt a little embarrassed by that kind of thing, selling it in storefront to people with no idea of what does and does not have significance, but it's a skill he has, something he can do with his hands to survive (why is he surviving?) and make money to support his lifestyle (but why?) and so he goes in and inquires.

Time passes. He works. He listens to the silence of what once was a community, where only the wind is the same. He waits for nothing, because there is no meaning to his life, and nothing to live for. He has Tori for company, but he is alone.

But, eventually, Tori -- Huracan, now -- wheels in from a flight and says, "Aoba is searching for you."

"Haa?"

"He's in the forest."

And Mink covers his face with one hand, choking his tears back so they're silent out of a lingering habit of not showing any weakness, but he can't keep them back. He knows that once Aoba gets whatever closure he's looking for, the only right thing to do will be to send him away, and he can't ignore his loneliness any more.


End file.
